Get Hooked Anthology

@spelunkadunk - Granny Thayer, Demon Slayer

At the stroke of midnight, the oracle smashed through the door, enveloped in a sparkling cloud of white. Its mouth fell ajar, and a hiss fogged the air. Blue-tipped fire blazed in his—her? its?—silvery eyes.

A farm boy on the precipice of manhood stumbled out of his bedroom to meet the threat. He hurried past his grandmother in her customary rocking chair by the fireplace, hip-checked the stovetop—still boiling an innocent pot of midnight tea—and spun to face the intruder.

Arthur Thayer, as the boy was called, had never seen an oracle before. But he had a vague sense that anything that smashed through the door of one's house in the middle of the night was probably not good news.

In his plow-calloused hands, Arthur gripped a sword carved from obsidian. He kept this particular sword under his pillow and polished it every night. It was an unusual sword, well-crafted, with silver lines spiraling round the handle—an old family heirloom, he'd been told by his grandmother, with a wink—and he'd received it on his fourteenth birthday. He still remembered the oddness surrounding that ceremony: family members exchanging meaningful glances, random sparkles in the air, a rainbow on the horizon. He had never quite understood the significance of the occasion, but a tingling part of him imagined the sword would someday prove important. As he'd plowed the field and gazed out at the other farmers, he'd always felt that somehow he was different. That he was destined for more than this endless toil...

That someday, he would be the hero the world needed.

He swallowed and pointed the sword at the intruder.

"Halt, stranger!" His hands shook against the hilt; it was one thing to practice swordplay in secret, and quite another to be faced with a living, breathing—er, was this thing actually breathing?—decidedly non-human entity. "Venture further unto this threshold, and I shall deliver unto you a swift death!"

The oracle waved a wispy, half-formed palm. "Bro, chill. I haven't even said anything yet."

Arthur blinked.

He glanced down at the sword, half-hoping for guidance. The sword lay quiet in his hand. As far as swords went, it was not particularly chatty, but if it had had eyes, it would probably have been rolling them.

"Well... state your purpose, then," Arthur said, after a very pregnant pause.

"The moment has passed," the oracle sighed. "The mood is ruined."

Arthur blinked again. This went far beyond anything he had ever dealt with in his limited role as a farm boy.

"Uh," he started intelligently. "You are—are you not an intruder come to slaughter us in our homes, steal all our hard-earned food, and rob us of our money?"

"No," said the oracle crossly. "I'm a fucking oracle. Can't you tell?"

Silence settled over the kitchen, broken only by Arthur's grandmother. She was still rocking in her chair by the fire, stroking her cat and knitting something round and wooly that might someday turn into a pair of mittens but currently resembled a teal blob with a thumb. Arthur met the oracle's silver eyes. Beneath the impressive bulge of Arthur's muscles—training every day with that sword had its perks—the hormone-plagued vessel he called a brain attempted a response.

"Uh... a what?"

The oracle exhaled gustily. Stardust spilled over the dingy kitchen, settling on the surfaces of the room. "Kid, I'm trying to reveal a prophecy. Do you think that's an easy job? Do you think I can do that just anytime and anywhere?"

"I... guess I never really thought about—"

"If someone's using the toilet, can you reveal a prophecy? No! And what if they are in the middle of eating a big, juicy ham and swiss cheese sandwich. Imagine, grease is still dripping down their chin, and then, boom!—oracle is here! All this"— the oracle swung an arm to indicate the flickering dust and its fiery eyes—"would just go to waste, wouldn't it?"